New Video / Freshly Produced & Released This Week!
Philly Music!
SIMULTANEOUS EMOTIONS
Philly punk rock outfit "Trash Boy" asked me to do a writeup about their new video, "Trash Boy - Fuck New York [official video]". So here it is! I would like to start by giving a shout out to band members, Chris Fortunato, Dan Baggarly and Nolee Morris. Thank you!
First of all gotta say this is a dope video. Great production aspects including the animation and talking faces from huge billboards. Yikes!
This video is also a mass and mess of emotions. First of all there's the anger and resentment that's in the audio, brought forward from the original version of the song as the lead track on the band's new album "The Future Is Trash". It's the anger and resentment as the band's family was driven out of New York by gentrification. We hear the family's history of living in New York generation after generation and then finding themselves no longer able to deal with changes and the increasing costs and city's seemingly inhospitable attitude towards every day working people. As a specific example the song points out that there are resources to build 10,000 dorm rooms for the kids of wealthy parents, but not enough resources to provide a decent life for every day working people. People are told "not to watch" as society siphons off more and more money to the billionaires.
While the original audio version by itself is very stark, the video version brings with it another emotion, an element of love. While the undercurrent of the lyrics is seething with anger, the video, in contrast, shows a lot of smiles and happy faces. Ironically, in spite of its title and obscenely shocking hand gestures, this video is also an homage to New York, showing people laughing, showing them in every day situations on the subways and in the streets. The scenes that the video portrays show the band has a real love for New York.
This story might be happening any place. The band's singing about "New York" is just using New York as an example, perhaps because it is one of the most egregious, but also because it is a place where the band's family has had a personal history. The song as well as the band's total body of work is more of an indictment of the failures of capitalism itself, as compared to a sole condemnation of New York. The band shows its love for people and its anger and resentment when people are mistreated. Throughout the band's body of work, the topic of economic and income inequality pops up frequently.
But what about all that anger and resentment? Where does it go? Look at the facial anger when the singer is being forced to move and he says he'll "fuck up somebody else's neighborhood." Is he destructively passing anger forward to those in the new place (in Philly? oh noooooo), or is he realizing he'll be an interloper to someone else? In a society that doesn't take care of its citizens to begin with, people are forced to displace in this harmful cycle.
So how do we fight gentrification? Here we seem to have a split. The band itself as a unit is a great example of activism as they keep the issues of gentrification and income inequality in front of our eyes and ears by their writing and their performing.
But as individuals, the characters in the songs often start up with a tone of militancy but wind up either willingly or unwillingly succumbing to oppression, and then making a conscious or forced decision to detach themselves from the dominant capitalist landscape, and then living "free". For example, in "Government Skatepark", the band laments the closing of public spaces and the fact that the city is corralling all skaters into government skateparks. The band even flirts with the concept of "overthrow", but, in the end, the main character winds up skating in the skate park anyway. In "40s and Blunts" the singer laments not being able to have a family or a future because, financially, both are way out of reach. [[And, as a side comment of my own at this point, this makes the cheery proclamations of both the government and the Sunday morning pundits about our "healthy" and "recovering" economy a little ridiculous. ... when there are many people who have lost and have given up hope and who can't afford even the basic necessities of life. We need to establish a new set of metrics when we discuss the financial health of our country.]]
The characters in the songs have tried to live by society's rules but have suffered in return and some now choose to break away. Because there is no hope. No reassurance. Capitalism has done a number on us. Nothing can be fixed. After all, "The Future Is Trash".
Is this a challenge or what?
Trash Boy received high acclaim from Philadelphia Weekly earlier this week. Here is a link to the article. Trash Boy's Philadelphia Weekly article (CLICK HERE)
From the band's web page: "you decide to climb to the top of the dirtiest landfill you can find, and throw a dance party on the disposable remnants of the capitalist hellscape. you listen to trash boy on your headphones, and as you thrust your body into an uncontrollable frenzy, your mind races back to every arbitrary oppressive societal expectation that was ever forced on you in your youth. so much study. so many rules. yet all our educations, governments, and billionaires did not save us. finally, outside of technology and the cobwebbed halls of academia, you are free."
Trash Boy has been touring the Northeast over the past couple weeks. Here is the click to their Facebook page so you can keep up with what they're doing: Trash Boy on Facebook (CLICK HERE)
If you would like to read the lyrics, click here: Read the lyrics CLICK HERE.
Personal Note: And while I also moved from New York to Philly, that was years ago. ... But the band's work is important and relevant in today's world as they talk about these current structural economic issues.
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